"Elegia na śmierć żony" Kakinomoto no Hitomaro a problem przekładalności poezji starojapońskiej

Abstract

The paper is a detailed analysis of two translations (English and Russian) of Kakinomoto no Hitomaro’s (660-710) “The Elegy for My Dead Wife” (included in the first imperial anthology of Japanese poetry, “Man’yoshu”). This analysis focuses on the problem whether to avoid translating the so-called ‘pillow-words’ (makura-kotoba) – fixed epithets, which were one of the most important rhetorical figures in the old Japanese poetry. Many specialists find them conventional and thus lacking any important information. However, in spite of their conventionality, makura-kotoba play often an important role in constructing of the set of deep allusions within the structure of the poem.